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There was a body in the meadow, but it wasn’t lifeless. Elf didn’t move as Georgie’s shadow fell across her. She did open her eyes and smile. The smile did something new and beautiful to her mouth. To her face. Her hair fanned around her head, a spill of black silk on the clover.

“What’s happened?” Georgie crossed their arms tight over the erratic thumps of their heart. “If you weren’t smiling, I’d worry you’d taken ill. But you’re smiling at me , so I worry you’ve taken very ill. Did you faint?”

“No.” She stretched out her arms, blades of grass peeping between her spread fingers. “But I do feel like I’m dreaming. Can you see it? I’m more or less in the middle.”

Georgie didn’t know what it was. They saw Elf. Elf on her back in a meadow, small, rigid body relaxed in rapture. Like some kind of angel fallen to earth. Or an elfin queen.

They stepped back abruptly and bumped into Anne, who’d rushed up behind.

“What a relief,” cried Anne. “I thought you were dead. The crows misled me.”

“I see it,” said Rosalie, muscling between Anne and Georgie and dropping into a crouch by Elf’s feet. “You’re lying in a dent.”

“A wolf pit.” Elf sat up. “A pit to trap wolves. Farmers used to dig them to protect their flocks.”

“Deplorable!” Anne clasped her hands. “Oh, woeful pit!”

Georgie looked at her with mild surprise. “You’re on the side of wolves?”

“Of course I’m on the side of wolves! I’m on the side of all wild, free, beautiful creatures. Men always try to kill what they can’t control.”

“Your father’s a worsted and woolen manufacturer.” Rosalie put her hands on her hips. “The wool trade is why wolves were hunted to extinction. The English economy depended on sheep.”

“How do you know that?” Anne’s forehead puckered.

“Your father,” said Rosalie. “He goes on and on.”

“I don’t listen.” Anne lifted her chin. “And now I despise him all the more, for what he did to the wolves.”

“To be fair to your father,” said Elf, “there haven’t been wolves in England since the Tudors, and there weren’t many even then. Most wolf pits are far older.”

“How old is this one?” asked Georgie.

Elf didn’t hesitate. “It was dug before 835.”

Georgie blinked at the specificity. “835.” They studied the former pit.

It was little more than a shallow, circular depression, a few yards in diameter, barely noticeable to a passerby, given the length of the grass.

The idea that Elf could read so much meaning into an all but undetectable dip in the ground produced in them a feeling of disconcerted awe.

“Why 835?”

Elf reached for her notebook. She’d been carrying it around all week, a notebook with a mottled pasteboard cover, big as a ledger, stuffed with loose papers and tied shut with string.

She picked at the knot. “835 is the date of the land charter establishing the abbey at Twynham. The description of the boundaries of the land parcel relies on landmarks, such as the wolf pit.”

“This is what you hoped to find? This…?” They gestured, feeling guiltier than ever for knocking that amulet from her hand. Elf had to content herself instead with a dent. It was lowering, literally lowering.

“Wolf pit. I mapped my perambulations, and…” Elf cut herself off. “Never mind. You’d all find it dull.”

“Not a bit.” Georgie held up a finger. “Hang on, though. I’ll bring intoxicants.”

They turned and legged it for the oak. They had to repack the basket, and by the time they got back to the wolf dent, Rosalie and Anne were sitting beside Elf, who held the notebook open on her lap.

“Georgie.” Anne looked up from the notebook. “Your house was built on top of the abbey. Were you aware?”

“There was very little left of the abbey.” Georgie sat, flicked off their hat, and arranged the repast on a folded square of linen.

Cold meat, salmagundi, plum cakes, cheese, fruit, biscuits, tea, and most important, champagne.

“Above ground, anyway.” They passed around glasses of champagne.

“We turned the crypt into a wine cellar.”

Elf made a tiny, judgmental sound in her throat.

“Taste this champagne,” Georgie commanded. “Then tell me it wasn’t worth it.”

Elf hesitated, glancing down at her frothing glass. Finally, she sighed and tightened her fingers around the stem.

“Wassail,” she said, and drank.

There were only three glasses, so Georgie splashed champagne into a teacup and polished it off in a single gulp.

Anne downed her own champagne and crawled through the clover toward the plum cakes. “Elf, tell Georgie about Sexburga.”

“Sex what?” Georgie refilled Elf’s glass. “Yes, please. Person, place, or thing?” They paused. “Or Germanic harvest festival? Pagan feast day?”

“I thought that too!” Anne giggled. “It sounds like a medieval rite of spring that ends with an orgy.”

“That’s the kind of thought you keep to yourself,” said Rosalie, serving herself salmagundi.

“Thank you, Mrs. Herridge.” Anne rolled her eyes.

“Person.” Elf spoke firmly. “Sexburga was a nun at the abbey, and a scribe. She wrote a chronicle that my grandmother studied and translated. It included the land charter. But it’s gone now. Chewed up by rats.”

Anne coughed on plum cake. “Did you say chewed up by rats ?”

“That’s my theory. They sometimes come down the chimneys and bite through the leaves of old manuscripts.” Elf toyed with her glass. “We’ve lost several that way. Grendel isn’t any help.”

“The monster from Beowulf ?” Rosalie was staring.

“Rats and monsters.” Anne looked delighted. “Are there also ghosts and miasmas? May we please pay a call?”

Elf regarded Anne with wary eyes. After a moment, she seemed to decide that Anne was sincere in her excitement, and her face cleared.

“Grendel is a dog,” she said. “I can’t guarantee ghosts or miasmas, but you will meet my sister Agnes. She spends most of her time playing lute in the tower.”

The promise of a lute-playing maiden proved more than satisfactory to Anne. She beamed. And Georgie refilled their teacup, wondering if Elf’s tacit invitation had extended to them.

“The wolf pit,” they said to Elf, as the foam subsided. “Why is it significant? As a monument to historic gamekeeping practices, it underwhelms. As a boundary, it’s defunct. I appreciate it as a picnicker, but you were ecstatic before the picnic arrived.”

Elf was smiling that smile again. “The wolf pit.” She sounded dreamy and stroked her hand through the grass. “The wolf pit is how I’ll catch William Aubin-Aubrey.”

As answers went it was the worst.

Georgie poured champagne down their throat then muttered, with obvious bad grace, “It’s not a William pit.”

“Who is William Aubin-Aubrey?” asked Rosalie, as though this William Aubin-Aubrey hadn’t taken up too much of their time already and wasn’t best forgotten.

“The Barrow Prince.” Elf’s eyes sparkled. “Author of Sepulchral Anecdotes . He’s a Society Fellow.”

There was less to like by the second.

“Barrow Prince !” Anne gasped.

“He’s not a real prince,” said Elf. “But he has opened over a hundred barrows, and his method is the finest in Britain. And he’s not eight and twenty. No one knows more about Celtic, Saxon, and Roman funeral rites.”

“Hmm,” said Rosalie, with appropriately diminished enthusiasm.

Elfreda didn’t seem to notice. Georgie had never seen her show such enthusiasm.

“He is planning a trip to the Peak,” she said.

“He wrote to Papa about it. But if I can just explain to him the strength of the case for the Northmen’s winter camp on the bluff, I’m sure he’ll dig here instead.

I lack physical evidence.” Her avoidance of Georgie’s eyes was somehow more damning than a glare.

“But there’s an entry in our family’s copy of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that records it.

And Sexburga’s chronicle records it as well. ”

“And this wolf pit attests to the accuracy and reality of Sexburga’s chronicle.” Georgie blew out a breath. “Which matters because the original has vanished.”

Elf’s expression betrayed her surprise.

Georgie enjoyed the feeling of having impressed her with their reasoning, until they remembered her surprise was premised on her thinking them an absolute idiot.

“And Prince William makes all the difference?” they asked, slouching like a child, and feeling like a child, for pettiness.

“He has assistants.” Elf was looking at them, brows slightly lower than before. “If William Aubin-Aubrey decides that the bluff is worth excavating, it will be done properly, much more quickly and thoroughly than I could do it myself. And the camp will be uncovered.”

“What specifically does one uncover in a camp of Northmen?” asked Rosalie.

“Dice?” guessed Anne. “If they were just sitting around.”

Georgie expected Elf to reject this immediately, but instead, she seemed thoughtful. “Perhaps dice. We’ll have to see.” Excitement flashed across her face. “It will be the very first.”

“And so you’ll be made a Fellow.” Georgie’s disbelief was plain in their voice. They dangled their teacup from their pinkie, watching it swing. They felt Elf’s gaze, and a blush crawled up their neck. They were acting like an ass, and they weren’t even sure why.

“Grand,” they said, lifting their head. “Let’s drink to it.”

Elf shifted a little, the wary look in her eyes again. But Anne poured the champagne, with disarming exuberance, and she settled and accepted the toast with a vaguely suspicious befuddlement that wasn’t devoid of pleasure.

For a time, they all ate and drank, warmed by the sun, the low hum of insects creating drowsy music.

One bottle of champagne was empty, and two more rounds emptied the second.

Elf seemed almost as relaxed as before, smiling as though she enjoyed Anne and Rosalie’s convivial chatter.

She’d never seemed so at ease when Georgie and the Janes surrounded her at neighborhood parties.

She’d exuded disdain and stayed all but mute.

Anne collapsed in the clover, giggling.

“What?” Rosalie raised her brows.